by Ian Ian No Comments

Good Lessons from a VC on “COVID-Beneficiaries” and Our Take on How This May Catalyse eCommerce and Online Payments Across Africa

Notes for video:  Kalon Venture Partners . . introduced to me to the term COVID-beneficiaries. 

Platforms and marketplaces, particularly related to core growth opportunities, like historically tourism and travel, and into the future SME’s moving their services online, and the consequent demand for transport and logistics systems 

Opportunity –  Incoming platforms moving from mature markets to underserved markets across Africa is a sweet spot.  They need all the help they can get and they have better margins and investment capability to tackle the market en masse to gain market share right now with smooth payment services taken care of.  This is particularly relevant when it comes to COVID-beneficiary businesses who are significantly benefitting from the new way of being.

These verticals will be on a growth curve into the future:  Retail and particularly essential services; tourism and travel will come back on stream but it will take some time – and Africa is most likely down the list when it comes to international tourism and travel operators looking for places to book and pay.  

Home entertainment like Netflix, Amazon Prime, PayTV, betting, gambling and gaming are high growth markets.  To facilitate eCommerce deliveries and to bridge the gap between people, logistics and delivery companies are thriving.

Think about your business and who it is serving and which of those or potentially new ones are onto a good growth curve.

eCommerce was on a strong growth curve before, and COVID has been rocketfuel for existing and effectively all businesses who are woke enough to move their services online.

Click here to contact us for your online payment across Africa

by Ian Ian No Comments

Vertical potentials & opportunities across Sub-Saharan Africa for Multinational eCommerce Companies

Vertical potentials & opportunities across Sub-Saharan Africa for Multinational eCommerce Companies

Vertical potentials and opportunities?  

  • Retail – giant size eCommerce (for eg Takealot, Jumia, Safaricom’s Masoko) are mostly well advanced when it comes to their own payments systems.  The silver lining is that this is paving the way for international eCommerce companies to leverage the improved consumer education, logistics and payment systems
  • Tourism and Travel – Tourism and travel are a key contributor to GDP in many SSA countries and booking engines through aggregation provide good payment opportunities
  • Betting and Gambling – digital and accessible, not affected by lack of infrastructure, and popular for entertainment
  • Deliveries and Ridesharing – transport is a base layer for all economies across SSA and the relatively underdeveloped transport infrastructures provide ample opportunities for private service provision off aggregator platforms
  • PayTV – the growth in PayTV has been significant, with Multichoice paving the way for other providers and runner up Netflix
  • DHL – their coverage of SSA is a key component in catalysing eCommerce
  • Insurance – insurance is finding new markets across Africa and cushioning Africans against shocks that come with the territory.  This could need online payment and particularly digital and smart contract based insurance platforms

If you are a multinational eCommerce company looking for payment across Africa please click here to enquire.

by Ian Ian No Comments

Our Sweet Spot as a Company in Providing Online Payments Across Africa and Europe to Multinational eCommerce Merchants

Digital eCommerce

Local institutions are familiar with local payments market.  Local SME’s are growing fast and require a lot of attention and support.  Incoming digital commerce can benefit from local legal entity, local compliance, local forex management, protection from the vagaries of internet connectivity, culture, language, legacy systems, local knowledge, local infrastructural instability . . so this is where we can help.  Not just a payment provider but as an enabler.

African is a big consumer market with low ATV’s.  There are big opportunities for sharing platforms, digital and especially entertainment with COVID, transport and logistics platforms (also COVID-inspired) and a wild card is insurance.

Also successful African eCommerce merchnats seem to have limited understanding and capabilities to set up effective global acquiring for example in Europe and the UK.

Into Africa is card, mobile and EFT and cross border to Europe is mainly card.

The ability for multinational, eCommerce companies in UK and Europe to deal with someone from their home region with African roots makes a difference to their level of understanding and trust levels.  In-country acquirers like to deal with their own people and so it works with us having locals on the ground in each country.

The APS strategy of small staff requires a level of outsourcing non-core elements and the choice of leverable business opportunities that require low but very experienced input and value add in exchange for a higher return

So if you are looking for payment at the checkout, and want a team that is very experienced in online payments, click here to give us a shout

by Ian Ian No Comments

Bringing together traditional payments and digital currencies to best serve our multinational eCommerce merchants across Africa

https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:6692393492313849856

I was chatting with my friend Jurgen who is a bleeding edge entrepreneur in the digital currency space about what we can do together in payments and he asked me what I want out of it, which got me thinking.

My thinking is that the industry is going to grow into digital payments over the next 5-10 years and the transition period will involve a lot of on- and off-ramps from fiat to crypto and back. We would like to play that role in the interim.

It would mean a good way for us to continue to expand our “acquiring” footprint. And grow our business and revenues with volumes organically and effortlessly once links are in place and our mutual service expands.

Over time we would like to provide our multinational eCommerce merchants
with a simple, seamless and effective traditional and digital payments service. Digital currencies are the future, traditional payments with card, mobile money and bank EFT are legacy . .

Our mission is to bring them together, in the now, to create a new reality.

Personally I would like to see level playing fields for Africa and African’s to simply and easily and effectively participate in the global and digital economy, our focus area being eCommerce – bringing two worlds together to mutual benefit.

Thank you. Please click here if you are looking for payment at the checkout across Africa

by Ian Ian No Comments

Anomalies of the African Payments Market – Creating a Smooth Experience for our Multinational eCommerce Companies

Notes for video: 

International businesses have the volume and and are looking for a minimum level of certainty and risk management when it comes to acquiring across the continent.  Most non-African merchants and payment providers expect African acquiring and payments to be like more developed markets, but it’s not.

It is imperative that the key payment methods of each territory need to be supported.  The further out one goes to less developed countries, the higher need for smoothing out the experience for multinational merchants.  

Card acquiring can be done from abroad, but the conversion rates will be a lot lower.  Many international issuing banks are blocking acquiring by African banks, and acquiring banks block transactions involving African issued cards. 

There seems to be few companies offering the “single API” and “all payment methods with local conditions taken care of”.  

This job will become easier over time as a result of interoperability initiatives like Hover, Mojaloop, Mowali and the mobile payment aggregators like MFS.  But they are all in the embryo stages and will need a lot of completion and maturing.

Some of the local payment platforms going multiregional have been experiencing quality delivery problems as a consequence of their scaling.  

It is imperative that we at APS continue to deliver smooth operations and service delivery to our multinational, target market whilst taking care of the inconsistencies and anomalies of the African market.  

Thank you – please click here for African acquiring